WP Security CheckVulnerability data as of November 8, 2026

Vulnerability alerts / September 23, 2026

Vulnerability in Import and export users and customers — CVE-2026-86583

HighSeverity
CVSS 8.8
0.5%Estimated exploit probability
EPSS
70,000+ sitesInstalls
2.4.18Fixed in

What to do now

Update Import and export users and customers to 2.4.18 or later.

Affected versions

  • Everything up to and including 2.4.17

Affected: Import and export users and customers (plugin, import-users-from-csv-with-meta)

Check: The plugin on wordpress.org / Our record for Import and export users and customers

What the vulnerability is

The Import and export users and customers plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 2.4.17 via the plugin's own export and re-import workflow. The vulnerability exists because the exporter writes CSV cells using fputcsv() with a NUL byte (\0) as the escape character, while the importer parses the same file using SplFileObject::fgetcsv() with only a single delimiter argument, causing PHP's default backslash escape character to be applied instead; because the export column layout places display_name immediately before the role column and nickname immediately after, an attacker can store crafted values in those two profile fields — saved by WordPress core via the standard profile page — such that the escape mismatch causes the parser to merge the display_name cell into the role field and rebalance the column count via nickname, yielding administrator as the parsed role for their own row when it reaches the import_user function's add_role function. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers with Subscriber-level access or above to escalate their privileges to Administrator. Exploitation requires a site administrator to trigger the plugin's documented export re-import migration with both "Update existing users" and "Update roles for existing users" set to "yes".

This description is reproduced verbatim from the public vulnerability record.

Sources

This page is compiled automatically from public databases. Accuracy is not guaranteed; confirm against the vendor advisory before acting.

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